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One side of controller feeding power to the other side's channels


tekcor1

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I have a controller this year that is all LED arches on one side (channels 1-8), and a mixture of LED's and incandescents on the other side (channels 9-16). When channels 9-16 come on, it makes the arches on channels 1-8 glow. The more channels that are on of channels 9-16 the brighter the arches glow. How can I fix this? I already have snubbers on the arches.

I'm having tons of problems this year. :D

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It might be worth a try to balance the loads between the two sides? Maybe just put arch channels on 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 and the "9-16" side on the even numbers 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16?

One other thought to try - if the arch lights are plugged directly in to the controller, perhaps plug them into extension cords first, then into the controller? Maybe the distance from the controller board will help with the electrical feedback.

Good luck!

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Ok, some strange wiring is going on. First question, are you feeding the controller with two power cords? Are these power cords on different circuit breakers?

How do your arches look? I am sitting here trying to see in my minds eye what is happening. Ok, so more you turn on 9-16 is causing some of the segments of your arches to light. Is it just a segment or is it all segments when enough of the other half is turned on.

Things to check. The hot leads on the left side, are those neutral leads going to the left side neutral connectors? Are the right side hots and the neutrals for that side going to the right side neutrals? This is very important if you have two power cords going to the controller.

I am running nothing but LEDs. Ok, just a few 40W bulbs for a few blow molds. So, I made a jumper to connect both sides to the power cord. Now it does not matter where I put my neutral leads going to my lights.

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I am running them all on one big extension cord with a 3 way adapter at the end. Obviously it is on the same circruit breaker since it's just 1 extension cord, but there isn't much else on that breaker so it isn't overloaded. I'll try running it from two extension cords and see if that makes a difference. There are four arches all on the same channels (1-8). When channels 9-16 come on, all channels of all arches light the same. The more of channels 9-16 that come on, or the higher the intensity (if fading) the brighter the arches get. I checked the wiring of the box and it is wired correctly. Gonna go shoot a quick video

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I know its late, but try this when you can. Pull all of the hot leads off of the controller for the arches. Leave 9-16 connected and using either the sequence or the hardware utility and turn on a few of 9-16 or all on and control the intensity. Do the items on 9-16 light up?
Now reverse and plug the hot leads back in for the arches and remove the hot leads for items 9 - 16 But again either turn on a few of the channels for 9 -16 or turn them all on and control the intensity up and down. Do the arches light up? Now turn off 9 -16 and control 1-8 and see if the arches work.
As I said in my earlier post you have some kind of weird wiring issue.
BTW do you have one of those outlet testers to insure that the hot is hot and neutral is neutral and that you have a ground. I have seen hot and neutral reversed.

But what you told me that all segments of the arches lighting is this. All 9 -16 circuits are tying to a common point (not neutral) Then all arches are tied to the common point and then the other side is tied to neutral. This is what you are describing to me. But I can not see how this could be.

So, you have a single source for power (like me). Do you have a jumper on your terminals so both half are powered? Are you sure you did not get your jumper crossed so one side has a hot lead going to a neutral terminal and a neutral wire going to a hot terminal. Sorry, but if you read enough of this forum over the years. You will see people that know better, make the mistake in the fog of trying to get everything put together right. Heck, last year I got cheap and used a 2 prong non-polorized plug and had hot and neutral swapped on all of my controllers. Right I was careful at all of my controllers, but the very first connection at the wall outlet was backwards and played hell with my display not turning the lights all of the way off.

good luck

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I just realized that all the LED channels (1-8 and 16) stay on at very low intensity when there is no sequence running. I knew that channel 16 was having issues, as it's strobes and a couple are firing constantly. I just realized that it's on the same controller. I thought originally it was a different controller. Is this just a bad controller?

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Since you stated that things are staying on low power. There is the ability in the hardware utility to set a min and max intensity. If your minimum is set higher than zero, the this could be part of your problem.

Chuck

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Did you do any of those test?

Without further info I have only two more suggestions.
1) reset your controller. I believe you said that these are the PC versions. So, remove power. Remove jumper from second row and apply power for a few seconds. Note LED blinks at a more rapid rate. Power down and reinstall jumper. Power up and test.
Now last year I was putting hot to the neutral terminal and neutral on the hot terminal of the controller and I has something similar happen to my display.

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cmoore60 wrote:

Since you stated that things are staying on low power. There is the ability in the hardware utility to set a min and max intensity. If your minimum is set higher than zero, the this could be part of your problem.

Chuck

Thanks everyone for the help. This is what the problem was. When I set up the controller, I remembered that someone on the forum had said that you should only do fades to 10% because they don' t usually come on anyway below that and you're just wasting power. When I saw that setting, I thought that's what it was for, so I set it at 10% and the forgot about it. Turns out that if you set it at 10% it leaves all the channels at 10% all the time. Not enough to light incandescents, but enough to light LED's. Not sure why channels 9-16 were affecting channels 1-8 but changing this back to 0 fixed it. Thanks again for the troubleshooting everyone!
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Max-Paul wrote:

Well that surely came out of left field. Never would have thought about that. Thanks for getting back and letting us all know what it was. I learned something from this.


Me too. I learned that when I have issues with LOR stuff it's generally user error. Oh wait, I guess I already knew that, cause I keep screwing my stuff up! :)

I was pretty happy that it was an easy fix. I was also thankful for all the support of other users like you who help me solve my problems.
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